How do you punish someone who disrupts a session of the U.S. House to protest policies that they believe promote climate change?

How about assigning them to do community service — which they then fulfill with an eco-group that trains others in the art of getting arrested?

Such is effectively the sentence for Samuel Rubin, one of a couple of dozen activists arrested during protests at the U.S. Capitol and the Interior Department in April. He must complete 32 hours of community service and has chosen to do it in Salt Lake City with Peaceful Uprising, the environmental group he accompanied to Washington for the demonstrations.

"The U.S. attorney is bad at what they do," joked Rubin, a Maine resident who is spending the summer working with the group associated with convicted activist Tim DeChristopher. "You're going to make me work on this issue more?"

Peaceful Uprising plans to train activists in civil disobedience this weekend.

Six Utahns were also arrested in the Washington protests. Prosecutors decided not to pursue charges against those who sat in at the Interior Department, though the demonstrators had to return to the nation's capital for a hearing before learning that.

"I had to fly back and use the [plane's] carbon" emissions to get there, said Joan Gregory, a Salt Lake City activist. "That was my sentence."

Steven Liptay, one of those arrested for singing in the House chamber, said he has yet to decide where to do his 32 hours of community service. He moved to Salt Lake City, in part, because of commotion around DeChristopher's disruption of a federal oil-and-gas-lease sale. He had previously worked with the Audubon Society, but he said standard advocacy work didn't seem to change things.

"I just felt I wasn't fighting a winning battle," he said.

bloomis@sltrib.com